Workflow Entry: FLOSS Communication Centralization Plot, Exponentially Weighted

The analysis in this workflow represents the basis of the analysis in our paper, Social dynamics of FLOSS team communication across channels. This workflow uses WSDL components to select periodized data from the FLOSSmole database and generate sociomatrices. The workflow parses the threaded list structure into a communication network based on reply-to relationships.  In the analysis process, an edge weighting is applied so that older messages receive less weight using an exponential decay function; this is intended to moderate the effects of using a sliding window of observations for dynamic analysis. The weighted sociomatrices are then dichotomized according to a threshold, and their centralities are calculated using R's sna package, and plotted in a time series. The final output demonstrates communication centralization trends over time in a FLOSS project.

The analysis workflow allows users to set parameter values for the size of the sliding window, the date ranges covered, and the communication venues analyzed.  Data for the analysis in the paper examined dynamics in different communication channels; the data sets included up to 90 periods (with a 90-day sliding window) and 10K's of email messages or forum posts. Date periods are currently only in months, and exception handling for empty periods is implemented both in the WSDL components and the RShell scripts. There are a couple of inelegant solutions involving temporary output files, which are configured based on a standard Mac file structure. Future development effort could focus on solving these issues and on optimizing performance.